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Only four people ventured out into the snow last night for a public meeting on what qualities
are needed in a new Columbus City Schools superintendent.

But the four participated in a mini-focus group in the cafeteria of Binns Elementary School on
the West Side and had plenty of advice to offer.

The district needs someone who knows how to read student-achievement data, “not alter the data,”
said Mary Nichols, 68, who has custody of her grandson, a ninth-grader at Briggs High School.

It needs someone who will let teachers teach again and quit drilling through curriculum guides
geared toward state proficiency tests, said Karen Burgett, 44, who has a daughter headed to Briggs
next year and a son in the fifth grade at West Mound Elementary.

“They’re not going to take a test when they get into the work force,” Burgett said. “They need
to know how to function.”

The district’s culture — how teachers and administrators operate — needs to change, said Michael
Cole, 39, who has two children in a district alternative school. Cole is planning a run for the
school board in November.

The district operates “based on its own beliefs,” said Cole, who added that the new leader needs
to transfer what the district does right at some of its schools to the others.

Jason Youngblood, 33, with a daughter at Briggs, said he wants school hallways to appear less
unruly and out of control. At one middle school he visited, students seemed to be out of line and
goofing around while school officials seemed not to care.

“There are not enough adults in the building to check that,” Youngblood said. “It’s almost like
kind of a free-for-all.”

And stop moving teachers and principals from building to building, they said.

“When anyone does a good job, they are moved,” Nichols said. “They don’t move the bad teachers.
They leave them there, which helps the school to fail.”

“With any kind of business, when you have turnover there’s a down-slide at the beginning,”
Burgett said, because staff members have to be retrained.

District spokesman Jeff Warner said it was disappointing that only four people attended the
meeting, but that the weather played a role.

The district has received thousands of comments on its website about the superintendent search,
launched after Superintendent Gene Harris decided to retire at the end of this school year.
School-board members Hanifah Kambon and Mike Wiles were at last night’s meeting.

The district will hold four more public meetings, including one at 7 tonight on the Near East
Side at Ohio Avenue Elementary School, 505 S. Ohio Ave.